Quality Angling
Posted: 29th Jul 2012
Another week has come to a close and it's been a fantastic week for many reasons and "interesting" but that's July for you!!. Week 17 was a new group of experienced Carp anglers with 15 french trips under their belts, but also on the bank each weekend back home throughout the year. The experience did show in their approach on tackling the lake. The 3 lads split in pegs 2, 3 & 5 and started baiting little and often, working the swims like chess players. Andy in 5 opted for a boilie approach like Chris in 3, and Peter used a lot more pellet than the other 2 lads. Baiting spots heavily for 48 hrs before putting a rod on it produced the bulk of the fish, keeping lines to a minumim around their baited patches, they started to catch consistently throughout the week.
The crazy thing was it has been the hottest few days of the year this week but nearly all the fish came out through the day and were quiet at night, along with the hottest day of 34 degrees in the "SHADE" they all had a fish on at the same time!!Just sometimes you can never call it in this game and this July has turned out one of the best for the fishery since we opened. All the fish are fightling like Tigers and the lads could not believe the energy of the fish regardless of the size, but they started to catch a few of the long males, which were all in a pumped up aggresive mood and a few were milting on the mat!! along with Chris's 38lb+ wild male, which turned out to be foulhooked which he was gutted about. Then out of the blue the fish started spawning again Wednesday night and into the morning and I got the feeling it was the last of the females that had not "cleared out" this summer. The fish have started to heal after this years romps, but I have never seen them look so empty, so they have lots of munching to do for the end of the year and a massive hit is on the cards soon.
34 fish landed this week but 5 were upper doubles all spawned out, but they are the stunning future scaley fish which you could not put a weight on anyway. 3 fish over 40lb+ with a 45lb 2 oz topping the bill, along with a 43lb and a 42lb passing spawn all over the mat when landed. 14 x 30lb+ (4 over 35lb) 3 grassies going to 30lb and 9x 20lb+ (3 x upper 20lb) and a lot of males making the catch up this week. All in all for this time of the year it was quality fishing but one thing I want to stress is only 1 good fish lost this week due to hook pulls. The lads were using ESP Raptor curved shanked hooks in size 6 and this made the difference. Chris in peg 3 had a mugger "bend out" along with more fish than I can remember this year being lost by different groups on Korda curved shanks, so please take this into consideration. Long hook links and the ESP have made the difference and 3 fish this week had very bad hook slips from the losses of the year so please don't bring size 8 because it's not just fish that you're losing, but it's causing bad mouth damage which nobody wants to see.
The Tench also spawned this week and even after 250kg being removed this winter the lads had a good 2 dozen this week, which is unheard of, normally 1 or 2 per week may come out but July always has a surpise every year!!
Just a big Thanks to Pete, Andy & Chris for the comments on the fishery along with good company and being true Gentleman makes the job all worth while.
Back Soon.
Team Sanctuary